Martin Tilo Schmitz

Prototype: Froggy Fun

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Froggy fun is a mobile race game where you steer 2 frogs on lily pads, utilizing multi-touch.

Download Froggy Fun

WarningNote: It’s a prototype!

Don’t be surprised to find bugs, imbalance and unpolished gameplay, input and graphics (especially with different screen resolutions).

If you find a bug, please go ahead and report it through the comment system below or contact me.

To play the game, download the Android APK to your phone, by scanning the code or clicking the image while browsing with your phone.

[imgtxt type=qrcode]http://www.martin-schmitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FroggyFun.apk[/imgtxt]

 

Screenshots

Level 1

Level 1

Level numbers directly map to the most common difficulty ratings of their parts.

Bonus Points

Bonus Points

These highlighted gates give bonus points if they are passed by simultaneously.

Rocks

Rocks

Rocks block the path and make navigating the river harder, but the only way they can hurt the frogs is by pushing them of the right side of the screen.

Respawning

Respawning

Here one frog was pushed of the screen, but he can still be respawned. Respawning is intended to cost credits that can be bought or (slowly) achieved through playing the game.

Sea Urchins

Sea Urchins

Ignoring the fact that sea urchins are salt water animals, they look convincingly deadly as obstacles. Spoilers: They are.

About Froggy Fun

Brief: Froggy fun is a mobile race game where you steer 2 frogs on lily pads, utilizing multi-touch.

Outline: 4 students, 1 week in Unity + 3 months paper prototyping on-and-off, mobile freemium game, done for a university course about social and mobile gaming held by and at Wooga.

Time frame paper-prototype: November 2013 – January 2013
Time frame Unity: 25 January 2013 – 31 January 2013

Tools I used:

  • Unity 3D
  • MonoDevelop
  • Mercurial via TortoisHG and Bitbucket
  • Excel
  • Skype

My direct responsibilities:

  • Level Design/Balancing (Scripting):
    • Level generator
      • Generates the level from parts
      • Generates with difficulty progression in mind
      • Generates additional obstacles according to part and difficulty
      • Dynamically increments difficulty level
      • Generates stress relief parts for pacing
  • Scripting e.g.:
    • Multi-touch input
    • Device tilt input (for a test case)
    • Level generator, see Level Design:
  • GUI:
    • Rudimentary GUI (parts are done by Curdula)
    • Implementation of standard functionality for Android hardware buttons

Team efforts

While I scripted the Level Generator, Cordula created level parts and obstacles (both as prefabs and their functionality) and assigned difficulty levels to them. As we worked in close tandem, we could easily test the system with ever new parts, play with different formulas for difficulty progression or try out new features like the randomization of obstacles.

Development Process

Three Months Paper Prototyping

Since we all either had work/internships, our Bachelor thesis’  and/or other coursework to do alongside this project, we had only a few weekends to meet and work on the paper prototype, that we then had to present on Dec. 14th. We started out with about 3 concepts, but we narrowed down  after doing some quick paper mock-ups to see how well they worked out and much we liked them. We went for a racing game and up until the presentation we still had a device tilt and swipe based input in mind and even had a small mobile prototype utilizing these.

We proceeded and abolished that input concept for something more exclusive to the mobile platform: direct on-screen multi-touch. We started prototyping that idea relatively late but at least we managed to arrange 4 consecutive days we could invest full-time on it.

One week of prototyping in Unity

We set up our base-camp at Cordula’s and hacked out the prototype, that you can now download above, through the course of one week with 4 days dedicated solely to this project. We started at implementing the input and creating a few new concept artworks, proceeded working on the lily pads, the level generator, obstacles and GUI and finally took on the struggled of different screen resolutions.

For the Future

We spotted a few difficulties with this concrete implementation of the concept so far, such as:

  • different levels of difficulty depending on the screen-size
  • lily pads are completely covered by fingers
  • bad feedback if lily pads are pushed out from under your fingers
  • while you can play it with multi touch, you can also just push the pads from side to side with one finger
  • …

Cordula took the time to try out some new ideas to address these issues in a major overhaul she started on her own once had finished her Bachelor thesis. I couldn’t make the time to continue work on it as well back then but there might be more coming up for this game.

I also enjoyed making my first mobile game and want to apply what I learned to other games. Maybe as a port for CatWalk to tablets (Phones are too small), maybe as a port for It’s Mine for mobile or as a completely new game.

Credits

Cordula Guder

Level Design/Game Design/Balancing

Scripting

Lydia Frank

2D Art

Martin Rau

Game Design Concept

Scripting

Martin Schmitz

Level Design/Game Design/Balancing

Scripting

Special thanks goes to our lecturers from Wooga for sharing their insight and advice on mobile and social games with us and giving feedback on the prototype.

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